Control of a Micro Aerial Vehicle: Stability Derivatives and Their Measurements

Abstract

Despite the growing interest and widespread use of Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs) for a multitude of applications, little is known quantitatively about the specifics of the flow regimes associated with these aircrafts. In order to facilitate the simulation of MAV flight, it is necessary to revisit the linearized equations of motion which describe the frequency response of an aircraft to a perturbation from steady level flight. This investigation provides experimental evidence that several stability derivatives generally considered negligible for conventional aircraft are in fact highly relevant for MAVs; thus, the linear equations of motion are rederived to incorporate these additional terms. Calibration data for the experimental setup was conducted in the form of measuring the aerodynamic loading and associated stability of a flat semicircular wing. Some preliminary aerodynamic loading data collected for the CU MAV is analyzed; for example, the nondimensional stability derivative @C M @ is measured to be -0.7. Finally, the relevance of these results on the flight performance of the vehicle is considered and the future work required for frequency response simulations of a MAV is described.